The Idea Thunderdome

New location

2005-07-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry google, your time hosting us has passed.

http://www.gustanza.com

Go there for the new and improved Idea Thunderdome 2.0

15 Minutes Restaurant

2005-07-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

This restaurant would consist of a "wall of fame" very similar to many other restaurants that contain pictures of famous people that have eaten there before. The main difference is that the pictures on our walls are from everyday people, who for at least a moment in their lives, are now famous.

I came up with this idea on the way to Lake Geneva, I passed a small diner and thought about all of the people that travel from all over the Midwest that come to Lake Geneva and perhaps look forward to eating at a particular restaurant. I am sure that most of the businesses in a town like Geneva are based and rely heavily on tourism. So, these no name tourists come from all around to vacation and eat a good burger. What do the restaurants give back?? Nothing. Besides good food and perhaps a good story.

With all of this in mind we would construct a wall of fame for people that attend our restaurant. This can be done either with paper pictures or even digital monitors that scroll through visitors. The main key to this is that the size of your picture or "level of your fame" would be determined by how many miles you have traveled. Example: if our restaurant was located in Rockford, IL and someone ate there from London they would get the "supreme picture" say an 11"x7", and a person from Chicago would get a 2"x3".

This idea hits on many levels: great food, excellent atmosphere and the main key - fame for some poor schmuck who has been suckered into dragging his nagging wife and ungrateful kids across the country for what they call a "vacation".

Sickofthistown.com

2005-07-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

This is an idea for a web page that would allow people to own a peice of civic history. This would be a compilation site where independent contributors would write about their hometown and document via fact, image and anecdotal information. The main page would consist of a map of the US, you would click on the state, from that point you would "drill down" to your city and contribute with others that share disdain for your hometown. The information contained could include political, social and moral issues that quite simply make you hate your hometown.

First entry: Rockford, IL - This is the town where more tax dollars are used on the 4th of
July fireworks than on road repair. Take a look at Harrison sometime, talk about a shithole of a street.

The combined hatred from people throughout a particular city would really make this an eclectic mix and an enjoyable website for young and old alike.

coreypattersonisadouchebag.com

2005-06-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

That is all. Coreypattersonisadouchebag.com.

Hey BTW, where did you decide to go for your personal Vaca? If you are ever bored on Wednesday nights watch 30 days on FX. Its the Supersize Me guy doing mini-documentaries.

A Story.

2005-06-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

This is a bit strange for Idea Thunderdome, but I figured what the hell. I have some spare time here at work so I decided to write a short story. A tale of life, death, and the Mach III razor. It goes something like this:

So yesterday I was at the park and I began to wonder aloud if there was a way to split the atom. Upon realizing that I had no fucken clue what the hell that even meant, I stopped and began to shave in the public water fountain. So that was the excitement of my day, shaving in a water fountain with rusty water and a Mach III razor, but whatever, I didn’t care, my life was all ready over.

I was continuing back to my camper when I saw a cast-iron grill that looked like it needed to be grilled upon, so I spent the next five hours trying to rub two sticks together in order to spark the charcoal that I later realized was non-existent. It was now 8 pm and I had accomplished very little, I began to get the feeling that I needed to shave again.

Making my way back to the water fountain with my Mach III, I began to think that the grass really ought to be cut, or more aptly put: trimmed. At this point I began the process of fashioning a rudimentary lawnmower. This consisted of my Mach III and the two sticks that I was trying to create fire with. Luckily I also had dental floss in my right front pocket so I was able to tie together the two sticks. After repeated bashes against the grill I had freed the three razor blades from my Mach III. I then began to tie the razors to the end of the sticks. I have, at this point, mutilated my fingertips beyond recognition, but damn IT if that grass was not going to be trimmed. This is a public park after all, and if the public does not take care of it who will. After several hours of floss, stick, and razor blade [insert picture] I came to the conclusion that the blood loss to this point is somewhat un-bearable. Suddenly I remembered an old parlor trick that I heard about, you can cauterize your wounds with fire, so back to square one with my rudimentary lawnmower. Apart went the sticks and I was back at my attempts to create fire. Now, with blood dripping down the sticks I feel as though I am going to pass out, which I do, and that is pretty much where the story ends.

Movie Reviews

2005-06-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

This site has some pretty cool movie reviews. So check it out damnit.

Lightswitch Anywhere

2005-05-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

THere are two parts to lightswitch anywhere. The first is a stick anywhere on the wall light switch, it is battery powered and remotely controls the second part, a plug that plugs in to any outlet. Kind of like those Airlets, except the cover is a receiver for the lightswitch, which remotely turns on and off the outlet anywhere. Anyway, our new apartment could use about three of these. If you can find this product already created, shoot me a link.

Dine-In Movie Theatre

2005-05-21T18:58:00.000-07:00

This is a rather simple idea. Essentially we need to buy an old movie theatre and gut out the inside of each individual "theatre". Rather than having the stadium style seatomg we would set it up like restaurant containing tables and chairs and perhaps even sofas. We would of course offer food and drink (alcoholica and non) and the type of food served would be "fun food". An idea within this idea is to bring back Stan's old idea of a store that specializes in selling french fries. This is one example of the type of food we could serve.

Back to the theatre - we would show old movies and have theme nights/weeks. One night would be Tarantino night and the next week could be boat movies, or something to that effect. Instead of people going to two separate places for dinner and a movie they could get it done all in one shot. The dine-in movie theatre is your one stop shop for date night.

Good Site

2005-05-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

This site is good. So check it out damnit.

H2Oh My God

2005-05-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

This is really more of a brand name more than anything. It could be a name for our bagged water or a nozzle for a hose.

My idea is this though: an entire line of water products from bottled to bagged water, aerosol cans of water, pump action bottles of water etc. The umbrella company will be H2Oh My God and we will specialize essentially in selling wacky water ideas. With all the people out there today that buy "flavored water" aka juice, and "sports water" aka water, we can really hit on a segment of the market not fully being serviced. H2Oh My God will sell specialty water - water for your car, water at the bar, water for ferns and water to cool your burns. We will do it all, wherever water is H2Oh My God is. Here's you,here's H2Oh My God.

Carwash in a bag ™ (old inventory)

2005-05-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

This is an old idea that I had about 6 months ago that I came across recently when doing some move-out cleaning. It's based off of
Greenhouse-in-a-bag, a client at my old job I did a brochure for. Basically its a carwash
in a bag. It would be made out of PVC piping and when you take it out of the bag it unfolds to go over your car and spray it with water using
misters. I made a schematic for it but cant find the scan of it. I will post it
here when I do. My idea was that when you come home for the day you attach the hose to it and turn on the hose, water pressure would power
the unit back and forth over the top of your car washing it clean. Then you would fold it back up in the bag when you are done if you want.
Slight improvement over my dad's carwash garage idea he had. Anyway, just thought I would add this to the thunderdome.

MorningBlog or DailyBlog.

2005-05-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

Think of it as Outlook for Blogs, or something. Every morning when I get to work, I use firefox to check on all my favorite blogs. In firefox if you are on a blog and you look in the lower right hand corner, you can subscribe to the feed. This means that when you bookmark the feed, and go in to your bookmarks, it lists a drop-down menu of recent posts (see pictures below). So this process of checking my favorite blogs’ feeds takes a while. What would be easier is if we created some type of aggregator that takes all of your favorite blogs and every morning you check your “BlogBox™” and see all the blog entries from your favorite blogs. Next to the subject line of the blog could be the image attachment to the blog or a symbol of an mp3 (podcast), kind of like on eBay when it shows a thumbnail. I know that there are all sorts of aggregators out there, but this software would be a lot more user friendly.

A simple quote

2005-04-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is still not enough.
- Eugene Delacroix

Thought it was fitting for this blog.

Mitch Hedberg

2005-04-06T06:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you ever saw him , but he was damn funny. He died on Wednesday March 30th, here is the link to the article outlining his death.

Alarm lamp and NaturalOcean

2005-03-31T15:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, so we have a fish tank, a little 5 gallon thing, and at night I click to turn off the light, and in the morning I click to turn on the light. Well I thought about it and I kept thinking how messed up it was for the fish, b/c they are swimming along and BLAM its night time, then they are sleeping and POP its morning. To me this is stupid. So I thought we should invent a tank light that when you click it, it slowly fades to dark, like twenty minutes, and the opposit in the morning.

This got me thinking about my own sleep patterns and about how we as stupid humans wake up to alarm clocks, a completely unnatural object that violently cracks us awake, no wonder we always hit snooze. Well what if there was a lamp, that 20 minutes before the alarm went off would slowly begin to turn on. It would do it without notice and when your alarm (built in to the lamp) finally went off, your body/conscience would be prepared to arise for the day. We could market it to the hippies/herbalists. I made a picture of what I am talking about too.

ComingNever.com

2005-03-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

Ok, lately I have been listening to Mr. Brightside by the Killers (thanks buddy by the way), and for some strange reason there are certain songs that are just Great in movie previews. And some movie previews are actually better than the movies, like the Garden State example. And I keep listening to Mr. Brightside and in my head put a movie preview to it. So here is what we do. Start a website that makes previews to movies that do not exist. So people go there and watch a preview and then it says coming....never. Get it? Anyway, we will make money b/c people will go to our website and see our mad preview making skills. I can be the graphics man, you can edit in iMovie. I had more thoughts on this but this stupid blogger keeps f*cking up after I click post. This is the 3rd time Ive posted this.

Dirty Work Domain

2005-03-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the movie Dirty Work? Well, here is an idea similar to that. Let's say that you hate your boss, wife, friend, etc. What is the best way to get back at them? A nasty domain. We will start purchasing domains such as: gusisadick.com or stanisahomo.com. We can then create the website based on your hatred for this person.

So if you hate Gus you send in photos, stories, quips or whatever to say about that bastard Gus. It is perfect even for a gag gift at Christmas time. Domains for the holidays, domains for a bad day, etc. The ideas are endless. Essentially we will come up with ideas for websites, buy the domains, and then market, sell, and design the domain and website to the end user --> people like you and me!

A Link

2005-03-10T18:24:00.000-08:00

You have got to check out this site. Just click on the "GB" button to get English. You have got to watch the videos.

Idea of the Century...

2005-03-10T15:28:00.000-08:00

Here it is: Disposable floormats for your car. They are going to be made out of the same material as those tree air fresheners that you hang from your rearview mirror. As an added bonus the floormats will also double as an air freshener. Obviously they would not be as pungent as the tree freshener, but the scent will be good.

The packaging would be exactly the same as the tree fresheners and sold in the same places: gas stations, Wal-Mart, auto stores etc. They would be perfect for winter-time to protect your mats and in the summer a great alternative for an air freshener. Start printing the money...

Domain Names

2005-03-04T15:29:00.000-08:00

Just some random google knock-offs that I thought of...
1) googledgoogle.com
2) idreamofgoogle.com
3) googlebumps.com

Check out What is asdf?

It is a pretty cool concept.

Websites: Blog Updates

2005-03-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

I agree, we are making some progress on this here blog. I had an idea for our idea blog. Wow, I know that most likely, I just blew your mind. Anywho, I think that we should have an "Inspirations" section or something like that - AKA Links page where we can throw some websites that we like to check out. I have two sites to throw on here tonite and we can worry about the links page later....

1) The Superficial
2) The Republica

PS I am diggin' the regifter page idea - I am going to post a comment to that one.

Service side websites

2005-03-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

This blog is bumpin!!!! Nice Robot idea. Very futuristic. The forward thinking is good.

I've got a couple of ideas to add to the thunderdome. They are both websites.
1) Okay, so there are a lot of idiots out there. Well maybe not idiots, but people that do not want to take the time learn how to do something. Like say, sell something on eBay, or start a blog for example. Well here is what they do, they go to our website and they can enlist a support agent to help them do that. Maybe call it JoinTheHighway.com or something.
For example, someone says to themselves, how do I get an email account? They go to our website and they can either call us by phone, or we send someone to their house to show them personally on their computer how to set up an email account.
How do I???? install my printer...we'll send an agent.
How do I???? hook up my VCR...we'll send an agent.
... you get the point.
The reason I thought of this is because of this "information gap" where older people that do not know how to do certain things like this but wish to. My father for example can rewire his entire house, explain to me how a thermostat works, but still has trouble checking his email.
Other possible names for the sites askthegeeks.com, throwoutthemanual.com.
Also geeks around the country can join our website a get paid by going to these people's houses and stuff.

2) Another is called regifter.com. Okay for some strange reason (probably the marketing machine) people are guilted in to buying people gifts for Christmas. So what happens, every year you get crappy gifts for crap you do not want. I have a few gifts this year that I am like, "what? why would you think I would want this?" So what happens is people go to regifter.com and they can donate these gifts to the site. These gifts would then be donated to charities or sold for profit (with profits going to charity). I got this idea b/c people would go online and send crap to soldiers in Iraq, but soldiers in Iraq arent the only people that need crap. I am not sure about the whole charity side thing or how it would really work (also its a glorified eBay), but its an idea in early seed stage. Keep bloggin!!

Ideas, they come they go.

2005-03-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

Nice sites human clock is, may I say... Excellent.

Another idea that I came up with involves small robots. That is right, I said robots. This is how it works: I was watching the Discovery Channel the other day and saw a show about sharks with those small fish that follow them everywhere. You know, the ones that eat all of the bacteria off of the sharks body. My plan is to produce small, almost microscopic robots that crawl all over the human body - 24/7 cleaning and sanitizing the body. I have not worked out the technical end of it yet, but that is the gist of it.

Prediction: In the future we will no longer use hand soap and faucets to wash our hands, these tiny robots, or mechanical objects will handle most of our daily personal hygiene.

More inventory clearing

2005-03-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is my third attempt at this post, I keep accidentally deleting it(doh!). I remembered a couple of ideas that I forgot to blast on the Thunderdome. I guess that memory of mine is going in my old age. I turn 25 this year. AH!! Here they are:

1) Shop-dromat. Put a laundromat in Wal-mart. I would explain more but I have twice already and I am tired of talking about it. Drop off your clothes, spend more time in Wal-mart (and more $), and pick them up warm, fresh, and folded.

2) The previously mentioned mouse glove. My right hand is FREEZING. And it is always my right hand, b/c it is on the mouse.

So there you go. No new ideas lately, oh well you just cant replenish genius. Here are some fun links for you to explore while at work.
Curiously strong mints
Another for fun

Gustanza Hits the Road

2005-02-25T11:33:00.000-08:00

Gus, Stan, and a player to be named will be attending the Chicago Cubs game on 6/11/05 vs. the Boston Red Sox. Historic Wrigley Field will be privy to the dominance that is Gustanza come June.. Stay posted for further updates about this historic date.

Up To Date Part Deux

2005-02-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Let us not forget:

1. Lint Roller vacuum for dorm rooms

2. Moisturizing clothes that react with your skin chemistry

Keeping the Blog up to date.

2005-02-23T09:16:00.000-08:00

Posted by Stan:
Here is a quick round up of previous ideas (pre-thunderdome), that I can remember.
1: Bagged Water
2: Not in my league wristband
3: A battery tested ON the battery (until those bastards at duracell stole it).

Well that is all I can remember.

PS Gus, nice idea on the Domain Lottery. I personally think that we should start buying up as many domain names as we can. One day those things will be like real estate. Imagine trying to start a business and EVERY domain name you want is already owned by someone else. This will be the reality in ten years.

Hey anyone else we want to bring to the thunderdome?

Also if you want a new template go ahead and change it, I am not married to this one. I just liked it because it had a dome on it.

Domain Lottery

2005-02-22T17:03:00.000-08:00

Ok, this idea is a little out there. It is going to take time, money and patience but I think it will work. Here is how it works:

We buy a series of website domains. I am talking about hundreds even thousands and eventually many many more. How it works is these websites will be all randomly generated names - i.e. www.asdfds.com - What we do is get members to join our main site, say we call it domainlottery.com. We could charge a nominal fee for membership and the way it works is this.

A member signs up and gets 1 free search per day for a monthly fee of $19.95 per month. They can have an additional 2 searches per day for say $2 per search. The way you win would be to find the hidden website. So for today lets say the winning website is www.afrdsec.com. If someone types that in they win. The prizes can include money, sponsored prizes etc.

We could even have different types of membership ie: Platinum, Gold, and Silver. Each one having a higher monthly fee but also have bigger prizes. The difference would be in the length of the domain, a Platinum would be a 15 digit domain and Gold would be 12 -- or something like that. The details can be worked out later.

The beauty of the venture is that the websites that are not winners will have advertising for other companies... Think about having a goldenpalace.com ad on one of the losing websites.. We should also get a deal with a domain website to cheapen the cost of domains since, number one we are buying junk domain names and number 2 we are buying in bulk.

Like everything else, it would take time to grow but I think the idea would take off.

Gustanza Empire Unveiled..... But Can They Handle It?

2005-02-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

Great idea man. I did a little research today at work. The domain Gustanza is available!! We are going to have to show some fools how we roll and pick this up sometime..

Flash in the pan TV

2005-02-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

Posted by Stan:
My latest million dollar idea is called "Flash in a pan TV." Where you have "webisodes" in flash of course for people to view on the internet. These webisodes will be cooking shows for your regular run of the mill, average joe. The main cook will be a regular dude, except cool, like Brad Pitt or someone. Someone that will relate to both male and female demographics. Each webisode is free and features three recipes and is only free for a period of one week, after that it is archived and costs like $3.99 or something. You can also buy DVD's of each webisode and of the entire "season." Welp there it is, the first idea to be shot-gunned into the IDEA THUNDERDOME.